SEO traffic to the homepage is down across sites
-
Week over week, I've noticed that organic traffic (and oftentimes revenue) for the homepage are down across most of our sites compared to last year. Brand search interest is down for a number of the brands, but in a lot of these cases, it's not down so much that it would make sense for how much the homepage is down (for example: brand search interest was down 4% last week compared to last year, but the homepage traffic was down 32% in visits).
What I've done is generate entry page reports (this year vs. last year) and then bucket the pages by homepage, category pages, and product pages. In most cases, category pages are up year over year for traffic and revenue. I'm concerned that the homepage being down is more than a brand heat issue, but I haven't come across anything out of the ordinary in Google Search Console and keywords are pretty consistent in performance for the most part. Branded keywords continue to rank at #1, too.
Any thoughts as to what else I can look into?
-
Hey WWW SEO,
It seems to me that the pages' implementations seem correct, so it doesn't appear to be a tracking-based issue.
Have you taken to top terms that are driving traffic to these pages (Google Search Console or internal data if you have it) and plotted them in Google Trends to see how they compare over the past 24 months or so? Some may not be high-enough volume, but those that are should give you a feel for where the the volume stands in YoY comparison.
Regards,
Trenton -
Hi Trenton -
Sure. Here are the 2 that I'm most waiting to anniversary the platform launch for: http://bit.ly/1XgbhtZ and http://bit.ly/1Xvikzl.
I've also seen http://bit.ly/1XvivuF take a hit in homepage traffic (mobile traffic to the homepage is down more than desktop. The desktop vs. mobile performance is kind of a case by case situation, since I haven't really seen any patterns that encompass all brands).
Thanks!
-
WWW SEO,
Mind dropping us a link to the website in question so we can take a closer look? This will allow me to check your tracking implementation and to do a quick check on other factors that may be causing an issue here.
Thanks!
Trenton -
Hey Matt! I'm still trying to figure this out. I'm wondering if it's in part a tracking "issue" or inconsistency. I was looking through both desktop and mobile traffic and they are both down, so it's not like one or the other is the main driver. Organic traffic contribution continues to be down year over year.
Before we moved our sites over to the new platform, some traffic had been directed to a Country Selection page (I can't remember all the details behind this at the moment). When comparing year over year data (we use Omniture), we're including traffic that came through the Country Selection page and went through to the US site. I don't know if there's something with this particular page, or if we are indeed comparing apples to apples by leaving it in (without it, homepage is up. Category pages are generally up across all brands).
Still a lot of digging to do and I keep coming up at dead ends, it seems.
-
Hi WWW SEO! How is this going? We'd love an update.
-
What is direct traffic doing?
And have does mobile organic compare to desktop organic year-on-year?
-
I can take a closer look into competitors and see what's going on there. The way our meta descriptions are structured is first a call out of "official site" (we've noticed a better CTR by calling this out in both organic and paid), action verb, targeted keywords, and "Free shipping". In more of a consumer-friendly flow, but that's the basic structure of call outs.
-
You could perhaps ignore the brand search interest, or the keywords that are being searched by Google and instead look at what your site is actually delivering.
What about your meta descriptions? Use them like a sales pitch & compare them to the other search results. I have found it is often the case that sites lose traffic in circumstances like this when a competitor ups the game & grabs more attention.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Homepage not indexed
Hi, I have a problem with my website. From my PC, when I search for site:nobelcom.com the homepage of the website doesn't appear, but on other PCs (different IPs) it is ok.
Technical SEO | | Silviu
Also any keywords that usually responded with homepage, now responds with other page. Does anyone know way this is happening. It happen before the Penguin update, and after a fetch like google and send to index, I had the homepage back on serps0 -
Will rankings for my micro site rank better if I 301 redirect it to my main site?
This is my first time asking so I will try to be as clear as possible. Ok, I have a micro site that is an (exact match domain) and the domain is a couple 3-4 years old and ranks very well for several search terms. The main two terms it ranks for are like this. houses for rent in XXXXX XXXXX homes for rent (XXXXX equals a city name) The issue is this site has no backlinks, zero advanced SEO, I only did basic optimization to it when i set the site up. Even site structure, url structure all are not good.
Technical SEO | | Robbie8299
The only page I have ever even seen rank is the main root url. But with all that the site does really good in the top 1-2 results for key search terms. Now, I have a main site that is a very big site that has steadily been climbing in search terms every month with great backlinks, optimized for the city and all.
It currently ranks on second page for the listed search terms listed above. What I want to do is 301 redirect this microsite to my city page on my main site that is much better optimized for the key city terms.
The 301 redirect would point this "root domain" (mymicrosite.com) to my city page that looks like this. www.mymaindomain.com/city/XXXXXXX If I do this will Google rank my main URL city page as well as it ranks this microsite with zero links, seo, etc, etc. What happens if it does not? Will I be able to turn off the 301 redirect and keep the microsite rankings? My main reason for wanting this is I want this city page to rank well and I only want to optimize one site instead of both. Any help would be great!0 -
Subdomains & SEO
Exact match domains are great for ranking but what about domains which contain just half of the full phrase being targeted? eg. If you owned the domain rentals.co.uk but wanted to target the search term "car rentals" Regarding backlinks, would it be best to link back to your rentals.co.uk homepage (using anchor text "car rentals") or to one of the following: a) www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals b) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk c) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals
Technical SEO | | martyc1 -
SEO - Localization
Hello Folks, I'm curious why my landing page is ranking at #1 on www.google.com.br ( brazil ). keyword: build wizard diablo 3. My lp is above well know domain names such as: wikia.com , blizzard.com , and also above a keyworded domain name: www.wizardbuilds.com/ Is just because my website is focus in brazilian google( .com.br ) or is because my landing page are better than the others( i don't think so)? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | augustos1 -
How to turn WP site into Ecom site?
I have a couple of old wordpress sites that are old affiliate blogs. I currently sell products that are on amazon on these sites and sell quite a bit of volume. I have found a source and can afford the inventory to replace Amazon with my own product. So the dilema is how to turn these wordpress sites into ecommerce sites. The thing I am worried most about is that each site gets about 100-200 visitors a day for great buying keywords. I obviously don't want to lose my rankings. What are the options of turning a wordpress site into a store. I am not interested in plugins or some of the other solutions that make the store look very cheap and I would assume horribly convert. If you have inner pages ranking for keywords how does that work? Do the post pages become product pages? So to sum up I guess I am asking, what are the options that are of the higher quality that will also help me keep my rankings? Thanks
Technical SEO | | PEnterprises0 -
Why does my site have a PageRank of 0?
My site (www.onemedical.com) has a PageRank of 0, and I can't figure out why. We did a major site update about a year ago, and moved the site from .md to .com about 9 months ago. We are crawled by Google and rank on the first page for many of our top keywords. We have a MozRank of 4.59. I figured this is something that would just take time to work out of the system, but nothing seems to change while we patiently wait. One more thing to note - when a user comes to the homepage (city selector) and selects their region they will then be cookied and directed to their relevant city site on subsequent visits. But even our city-specific pages (ie www.onemedical.com/sf) have pageranks of 0. My management team keeps asking me about this and I suspect there is something silly that we keep overlooking...but for the life of me, can't figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | OneMedical0 -
Moving Duplicate Sites
Apologies in advance for the complexity. My client, company A, has purchased company B in the same industry, with A and B having separate domains. Current hosting arrangement combines registrar and hosting functions in 1 account so as to allow both domains to point to a common folder, with the result that identical content is displayed for both A & B. The current site is kind of an amalgam of A and B. Company A has decided to rebrand and completely absorb company B. The problem is that link value overwhelmingly favours B over A. The current (only) hosting package is Windows, and I am creating a new site and moving them to Linux with another hosting company. I can use 301's for A , but not for B as it is a separate domain and currently shares a hosting package with A. How can I best preserve the link juice that domain B has? The only conclusion I can come up with is to set up separate Linux hosting for B which will allow for the use of 301's. Does anyone have a better idea?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Site Relaunch
Hello, I recently launched my new site (Nov. 25, 2011) but still have the old site live because I still need old customer data from the old admin for customer service issues and I cannot delete the old front-end without deleting the old back-end!. I am seeing a lot of referrals coming from the old site IP address with many backlinks to the new site but dont know if this is actually hurting the new site due to duplicate content, ect .. Any input would be greatly aaaaaapreciated 😉 Thanks in advance, Byron-
Technical SEO | | k9byron0